can we really see? we can look. but can we really see?

funny... the things that come into your head when you're supposed to be concentrating on something else.

my friend asked me how long i thought it would be before everyone simply forgot about everything that's happened and is happening on the gulf coast. how long it would be before people put the atrocities and misery and pain and destruction out of their minds. it's really very simple - people will remember until something bigger, more terrible and more 'press-worthy' comes along. because we have no foreign enemy, and nothing but our own ineptitude as a national body to blame, it won't be long before our attentions are diverted elsewhere. until those in power are directly effected, until their homes are fifteen feet under a stinking, infectious, toxic stew; until their parents, children, husbands and wives, friends and loved ones are missing without a trace; until they are trapped amongst rapists and murderers with no possible escape; until they have lost absolutely everything - any semblance of a normal life... until that happens, our attentions will be diverted elsewhere... to things less grim and - frankly - embarrassing.

yes. it is absolutely shameful that our organizing bodies - the people who actually have the power to do something, the people who have the bloody responsibility to do something - let tens of thousands of people sit, stranded in a post-apocalyptic nightmare. i read a new york times article entitled 'united states of shame' today... i thought it was a most appropriate title. it's simply ricoculous that we, as a country, didn't mobilize sooner to save our own people. we seem to have no problem mobilizing if it means that we get to destroy something. if we get to kill some other country's people. yet we trip over our feet and fall flat on our faces when it comes to helping our own people... yes, most of them are poor. yes, some of them are criminals. but it does not mean that they are sub-human and that it is somehow alright to just wait five days to do anything at all. five. days. five horrible, terrifying days.

mr. president - how can you stand in front of our nation and call yourself our leader, our commander in chief, when you didn't do anything. yes, i blame your government, our government, my government - not for hurricane katrina. not for the flooding and the destruction - a much mightier force than you did that [no, not god. NATURE: that force that you seem to so easily push to the back-burner of your mind when you make policies that blatantly disregard the environment, discontinue policies that would attempt to protect the environment, etc.]. i blame your government for letting so many die needlessly - for letting them sit and starve and whither away until every shred of that so-called 'civilized' nature was stripped from them. at the push of a button, the whisper of an order, thousands of people could have been mobilized immediately to start to do some good. but that button wasn't ever pushed, that order never given - at least not when it should have been. do you understand that possibly 10,000 or more could be dead? can you even begin to comprehend a number like that? not nameless, faceless people. your citizens. the people you and your cronies are supposed to protect. isn't that what you promised to do when our blinded nation put you in office? to protect the people. well, nicely done. swell job.